Today we’d like to introduce you to Lynne Sade.
Hi Lynne, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers?
My husband and I bought our fixer-upper farmhouse just outside of Charlottesville, Virginia in 2013. Ever since then, we’ve spent all our free time working on our house and the 5 acres it sits on, whether it be fixing the plumbing, scraping off wallpaper, planting a garden, or weed-eating. We welcomed our first baby in 2014, our second baby in 2016, and then decided to become foster parents in 2019. Our foster parenting journey really had all the emotions… we felt we were able to make a positive impact in children’s lives who needed love, and it was also indescribably gut-wrenching.
Our foster parenting journey ended in 2019 and we decided to try to for another baby in 2020. We found out we were pregnant with twins in March 2020, the same week our two older kids got sent home from school “for two weeks.” The pandemic changed everything. I developed hyperemesis gravidarum and was constantly sick. My husband had to take a leave of absence from his job to take care of me (and our two kids who were home, too!). We had no help because we were terribly afraid of COVID with my twin pregnancy. Once the twins were born in October 2020, it didn’t get easier.
We had no help from family and we were in survival mode for well over a year. Our two older kids kept getting sent home from school for sneezing or runny noses, and it was a disaster. We decided to homeschool our older two kids for the 2021-2022 school year and travel. My husband is still able to work remotely, and we figured the time was right to slow down our pace of life and reconnect as a family. We rented out our beloved farmhouse to a traveling nurse and hit the road.
We have truly enjoyed this time as a family. We’re getting to experience new places and parts of the US we’ve never been to before and our kids are loving the leisurely pace. We don’t have to wake up early and rush out the door, but instead take our time exploring childrens’ museums, playgrounds, and local attractions. We’ve enjoyed North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and now Florida. While we certainly miss our life at home in Charlottesville, we are so grateful for this opportunity to not tackle any home projects.
It feels free to be away from an old house where something is always breaking. We may not have 5 acres right now, (and we are acutely aware of that when we’re all cramped in our minivan!) but this season of life is so precious. I’m so happy we’re not at home and taking the time our family needed to not just survive, but make our own schedules instead.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The hardest part of leaving our fixer-upper farmhouse in the hands of someone else was the feeling of “letting go.” We decided to trust a traveling nurse and her husband with our most beloved possession– our house.
When you’ve spent nearly a decade fixing up your own house, it feels almost like a child you’ve raised. Everything in that house– every surface– has been a project we’ve worked on at some point. It was definitely a leap of faith to pack up our belongings and trust that the farmhouse will be in good hands while we were gone. We also left our goats, pigs, and chickens behind. They are easy to take care of, but it felt scary to entrust their care to someone else.
Living on the road for months upon months is not a cheap exercise, but we are finding ways to be frugal as we travel and we’re okay with splurging on experiences as we go. We hired a boat, for example, to explore Tybee Island, which was expensive but worth it to show our kids a different part of Georgia they wouldn’t have otherwise seen.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about A Farmhouse Reborn?
I have a blog called A Farmhouse Reborn (www.afarmhousereborn.com) where I share about our home renovation projects but also do virtual home tours of other beautifully restored farmhouses.
I love getting to meet other historic farmhouse enthusiasts and hear their stories.
As an otherwise stay-at-home mom to 4 kids, having this blog is a great way for me to reconnect with other adults who share my interests. I’m proud of the platform I’ve gotten to give homeowners to share their hard work, especially during a pandemic when we haven’t had the opportunity to see inside peoples’ houses!
Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
It is definitely a risk to pack up a young family of 6 and leave your house for months. There is a lot that could go wrong. We’ve packed a first aid kit that takes up an enormous cardboard box! Having twin toddlers on the road is extremely disruptive to their schedules. Homeschooling a 2nd grader and kindergartener is really stressful when you have no homeschooling background.
I’m anxious I’m doing so much wrong. But… and this is a big “but…” I think shaking things up post-Covid is the best thing our family could have done to reconnect with each other. Like the famous quote often attributed to Mark Twain, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” We’d be remiss as a family to go from a stressful pandemic and ease back into “normal.”
Our kids aren’t doing activities like Girl Scouts or basketball or youth group right now, thanks to the pandemic, so we figured this was definitely the time to uproot ourselves and travel. Taking a risk like this is scary because you never know what could happen, but it felt even scarier to think about how I’d look back on my life 50 years from now without doing something like this.
Our family deserves a chance to bond together instead of just getting by in survival mode.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.afarmhousereborn.com
- Instagram: @afarmhousereborn
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AFarmhouseReborn
Image Credits
Simple Will Photography
